Striker on list of Swansea targets - Williams

Swansea City will target a centre-forward this summer with Luke Williams chasing new signings in “every department” of his squad.

Swansea are braced for a busy close season as they look to rebuild after a turbulent campaign.

Head coach Williams says the addition of players capable of scoring goals will be a key part of Swansea’s transfer business.

“I think there is a realistic possibility that there will be a new striker,” he said.

“We also need to bring in other players who have either proved they can score goals, or players we believe we have seen enough to suggest that if we put them in the right position, they will score.

“We definitely need more natural finishers, more guys with the instinct to finish actions off, because we are getting in there.”

Swansea lost Joel Piroe, who reached the 20-goal mark in each of his two seasons in Wales, to Leeds last summer and replaced him with Jerry Yates, who struck 10 times in his first campaign at the club.

Jamal Lowe was the Swans’ joint leading scorer alongside Yates in 2023-24, but he has now come to the end of a year-long loan.

Lowe is one of six loan players who have said their farewells alongside Carl Rushworth, Harrison Ashby, Bashir Humphreys, Charlie Patino and Charles Sagoe Jr.

There is no news yet, meanwhile, on whether Swansea’s six out-of-contract players – Kyle Naughton, Nathanael Ogbeta, Joe Allen, Liam Walsh, Jamie Paterson and Przemyslaw Placheta - will remain at the club.

Williams is understood to want some of those players to stay, but there will still be scope for a number of new recruits as Swansea look to improve on a 14th-place Championship finish.

As it stands, there are just 17 senior players – including some fringe figures such as Kristian Pedersen and Nathan Tjoe-A-On – under contract for 2024-25.

“Naturally there are gaps now in the squad that we need to fill and we need to fill those gaps as intelligently as we possibly can,” Williams said.

“We have lost a number of the squad so we are going to have to bring in at least one player in every department.”

Williams says he will be “one member of the team” involved in the process of finding new players.

“Certainly I will be giving my opinion on any potential signings because it matters to me more than anything else in the world, so we need to get that right,” he added.

Swansea’s recruitment plans will depend in part on how many of the out-of-contract group sign new deals, with offers now made to those players the club want to keep.

Williams said the wait for concrete news goes on, adding: “We are further down the line but in terms of pen on paper, we are not there yet.”